


you don't know what (you) got

by jugheadjones



Series: ferris bueller, you're my hero [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Multi, comics plotlines, fred fucks up (again), kids being kids, parentdale, the beach hijinks return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13259754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: “I want two coats on before I or your mother see you leave this yard.”“Dad, Hermione’s going to be there. Do you want grandkids or not?”“Grandkids, i’ve got. Do you know what I haven’t got? A painted garage.”“Daddy!” wails Fred. “You don’t love me!”“Love’s got nothing to do with it.” Artie holds out the paintbrush. “Garage. March.”





	you don't know what (you) got

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bewareoftrips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewareoftrips/gifts).



> i wrote this from memory because i haven't seen the original comic in years but the whole fic is essentially stolen from my absolute favourite archie digest comic. the premise is not mine. 
> 
> title from the beach boys little deuce coupe!

“Goodbye _Maman! Papa!_ ” Fred Andrews blows an exaggerated kiss over his shoulder as he breezes down the stairs, clad in swim trunks, sunglasses, and sagging tennis shoes. Car keys jingle buoyantly from his free hand as he heads toward the front door. “Your everlovin’ first born is off for an afternoon of sand and sun. Take my messages for me.”

Just as his confident stride breaks into a dash, he finds his path blocked by his father’s broad chest, heavy arms folded firmly across the front of his dress shirt. “Not so fast everlovin’ first born. Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?”

Fred backs up a half-step, car keys rattling. “I already put sunscreen on.”

Artie Andrews laughs and shakes his head. “ _Sunscreen_. I’m talking about a promise you made me about three weeks ago that you’d paint that garage.”

“Oh,” says Fred anxiously, moving sideways to peer around his father’s shoulder, out the open window. “I’ll get around to that really soon. Can I, um-”

Artie stands firm. Dawning horror begins to break across Fred’s relaxed features.

“You wouldn’t. Not your favourite kid.”

“FP will understand.”

Fred’s mouth drops open in a perfect expression of horrified betrayal. “Dad, have a heart! It’s beautiful outside!”

“Then you should have done it back when I asked you the first time.”

Fred clasps his hands together in a plea, crushing the car keys between his palms. A sweat is breaking out in his hairline that has nothing to do with the heat. “I promise I’ll do it tomorrow. I cross my heart.”

“Tomorrow’s Monday. Are you missing school, now?”

“I’ll wake up early.”

“Sorry, Fred, it’s now or never.”

The towel Fred had flung over his back on the way downstairs slides off his lean shoulder and puddles on the floor. His face crumples in despair. The sun is still streaming in brilliantly through the glass, but all of it is gone from Fred’s eyes. “ _Papa_ ,” he moans plaintively. “I’m your only son.”

“And you know what the only son gets to do?

“Sexism!” rails Fred as Artie marches him out the front door and around to the back. “Geez, dad, haven’t you ever heard of women's lib? Tell Linny she can paint the garage!”

Artie seizes Fred by the ear. “I raised you to be a gentleman. Do you know what that means?”

“Ow!” Fred’s eyes are stinging with tears. “I’m sorry. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”

Artie releases him, leaving Fred standing shirtless in front of the garage. It’s coming up on the middle of the day, and the roaring sun is edging up into its peak. The sky is clear blue and cloudless, the pavement sizzling under his battered shoes.

Artie steps into the garage and returns with two pails of white paint and a paintbrush. “Here you go. I’ll make it easy on you.” He sets the cans down. “I want two coats on before I or your mother see you leave this yard.”

“Dad,” Fred tries one last time to plead his case. “Hermione’s going to be there. Do you want grandkids or not?”

“Grandkids, i’ve got. Do you know what I haven’t got? A painted garage.”

“Dad _dy!_ ,” wails Fred. “You don’t love me!”

“Love’s got nothing to do with it.” He holds out the paint brush. “March.”

Fred howls.

* * *

The garage is slow going, and any hopes Fred had had of making it to the beach before dinner disappear almost immediately. After twenty-five minutes he’s barely made a dent in the front side. Twice he’d lost his temper and tossed the paintbrush on the grass, and there are white marks spread out around his feet. He’d returned to his room to throw on some painting clothes, and sweat is puddling at the back of his neck and under his baseball cap.

“It’s not fair,” he grumbles to himself, slapping the paintbrush wildly at the siding. “It’s not  _fair._ I’m getting old out here.”

“Talking to yourself, Fred?”

Fred turns. FP Jones and Harry Clayton are loitering at his front fence, both in swim trunks and t-shirts, watching him toil. FP rolls his shoulders up in a shrug. “What gives? I thought we were going to the beach.”

Fred wipes some sweat out of his eyes, inadvertently smearing himself with paint. “My dad’s making me paint the garage, cause I kept promising to do it and never did. He says I can’t go anywhere ‘till I’m done.”

“Man, bummer,” says Harry, flexing his arm.

“Yeah, shit,” agrees FP. “It’s a nice day.”

“Hey,” says Fred hopefully. “If you guys help me out, it’ll take half as long. We can get it done really quick and then-”

“Oh, no way -” protests Harry. “That looks like it’ll take all day. Besides, I know Fred. He’ll have us doing all the work and he’ll be sipping a smoothie inside.”

“Not true!”

FP snorts. “He’s not wrong.” He drops his gaze to his feet when Fred turns to face him. “Well, Fred, you know, I promised Alice I’d be there for lunch-”

“It’s just Alice! You can see her any old time!”

“And I gotta play volleyball with the guys.” FP shrugs again. “Besides, you were supposed to do this a hundred years ago, you kinda deserve it.”

“FP! What kind of friend are you anyway!”

“The smart kind,” says Harry, hooking an arm through FP’s. “Come on. The guys are waiting for us.”

FP actually chuckles at the gobsmacked look on Fred’s face. “I’m sorry, Freddy. You earned this one.”

“ _FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS!_ ” Fred howls after them as they walk away. “I can’t count on you bozos for anything!”

Fred turns back to the garage, hurling his paintbrush at it like he’s throwing a changeup. It skitters down the side and leaves a very thin streak of colour. Fred takes his ball cap off and wipes it across his forehead. Closes his eyes. The garage is still sitting there when he opens them, as huge and as unpainted as ever.

Fred throws his head back and lets out a scream.

* * *

“Turn some music on,” says Artie, inside. “That kid’s howling like a banshee.”

Mrs. Andrews reclines in a rocking chair, mending the armpit of a shirt with her sewing kit open on her lap. “Don’t you think you were a bit harsh on him, Artie?”

Artie draws the curtains shut across the open window. “No, I don’t. The boy has to learn some responsibility. If I don’t teach it to him, no one will.”

“It is a nice day.”

“It sure is.” Artie helps himself to a drink of water. “One day that kid’s going to grow up, and he’s going to have to work on all kinds of nice days. He doesn’t get off easy because it’s hot out.”

He crosses to the window, pulling one of the curtains open. “Two coats, remember, Fred.”

All he gets is an enraged cry in return.

“You’d think I was the first person on earth to ask my son to paint a garage for me,” complains Artie, thumbing through a crate of records. “I’m not the issue here. I’ve been waiting on him to do this for almost a month.” He selects one and places it on the turntable, dropping the needle. “If he did it back when I asked, he wouldn’t have this problem.”

The music fails to cover up another audible groan from outside, and Artie sticks his head back out the window. “Fred, if you spent as much time painting as you did complaining, you might be done by now!”

“Artie, leave him be,” protests his wife. “Come sit down. I don’t want to listen to you two antagonize each other across a windowsill all day.”

Artie drops into a chair, picking up a newspaper, but then tosses it aside. “I can’t relax.” He gets to his feet, storming out of the room. “Let me know when he’s through moaning and groaning.”

* * *

“Lousiest friends in the US of A,” mutters Fred, slapping some paint at the wall. FP and Harry have long since moved on, and the sun is scorching overhead. He’s pretty sure he’s sporting a magnificent sunburn on his ears, which he may have missed with the sunscreen earlier.

“Well, well, well. Your parents couldn’t afford any better looking help?”

The brand new convertible had approached him so noiselessly that Fred hadn’t even noticed it slow to a stop in front of his house. He spins around, squinting in the vibrant glare of sunlight off the windshield. “Go away, Hiram.”

“It must be terrible to be poor.” Hiram lowers his sunglasses, looking over them down to Fred. “Is this how you all spend your sundays? Toiling in menial labor? How tragic.”

“Fuck off,” mutters Fred through gritted teeth.

“Touchy today, aren’t we?” Hiram reaches out and pets the buttery black leather of the dashboard. “How do you like the new toy? I’d offer you a ride, but I promised Hermione she’d be the first one.” He smiles, a smug lift of the lips. “Maybe next time. I can see you’re all tied up.”

He punches a button on the dashboard and the radio bursts into life, blasting classic rock out onto the street so that Hiram has to shout to be heard over it. “I think I’ll go see how Hermione’s doing! Supposed to meet her at the beach, weren’t you? Maybe she’d like to go up to Miller’s Point with me.”

“FUCK OFF!”

Hiram cranks the radio louder. “Better luck next time, Fred!” He laughs and puts the car into drive, blasting back out onto the street and narrowly avoiding side-swiping the Andrews’ mailbox. Fred chases him the length of the lawn, tearing one of his tennis shoes off his sweaty foot and hucking it with all his strength after the car. It misses by a wide margin, hitting the middle of the street and bouncing.

“Fred Andrews!”

Fred turns to see his mom standing in the doorway, arms folded. “What on earth are you doing, throwing your shoe? You leave that nice boy alone!”

“Nice boy!” Fred runs toward his mother, stumbling a bit in one bare foot, his paint-stained shirt flapping around his chest. “Mom, you have to talk to him. Please, please, _please_ talk to Dad. Hiram Lodge is about to ruin my love life. Permanently.”

Mrs. Andrews shakes her head. “Your father is right, Fred. You should have done this a week ago.”

“Mom please, please, just talk to him. That’s all I ask. If anyone can get him to see sense, you can.”

She sighs, smoothing down Fred’s sweaty hair. “Look at your ears.”

“Mom, _please_.”

Mrs. Andrews sighs. “Put some sunscreen on your ears. I’ll talk to him. But that’s all I can promise.”

* * *

“Don’t you guys have the longest faces in the world,” says Jerry Mason, approaching the small group of teenagers clustered together on beach towels. “It’s a beautiful day. What’s going on?”

Alice Cooper is drawing in the sand with a stick. “Is something going to happen, or what?”

“We need Fred,” speaks up FP.

Mary pulls a face. “Oh, don’t say that.”

“We do. You know it.”

“Fred always makes stuff happen,” agrees Melinda. “And this town is about as flat and dry as cafeteria pancakes.”

FP looks up in time to see Hermione approaching from across the dunes, looking grouchy. Her black gauzy cover-up flutters around her long, tanned legs as she strides through the gleaming sand.

“How’s Prince Charming?” FP asks as she joins the group.

Hermione huffs. “Someone needs to take his ego down a notch. I’m sick of hearing him talk about himself.”

In one easy movement, she lifts her cover-up off over her head, exposing an ultra-tiny lime green bikini. Mary’s jaw drops. Jerry whistles appreciatively. Hermione tosses the cover-up aside and sits down beside FP, popping open a bottle of suntan oil and rubbing some into her legs.

“Geez, Hermione, you’re killing me,” mutters FP as she leans over to adjust the beach umbrella.

“I wanted Fred to see it,” she complains. “I wanted to burst his sweet little head open.”

“That’ll do it, all right,” says Jerry, eyeing Hermione’s lower half. Mary scowls at him.

Hermione huffs and swings a leg over FP. “How about you, FP? Give me a kiss.”

“Hermione, much as I love you, I’m staying celibate this week.”

“I thought that was every week,” speaks up Jerry. Alice snorts and tries to hide it in a can of soda.

“Where the hell is Fred anyway?” Jerry adds, looking around the circle, as though he may have just miscounted. “He has something better to do?”

“He’s on garage painting detail.” offers Harry.

“Yeah, he’s been promising his folks he’ll paint the garage since before school started.” FP flops back down on his towel. “They finally cornered him. He’s grounded until he gets it done.”

“Bummer,” someone speaks up.

“He deserves it,” says Mary, but no one agrees.

“Well, how long’s it gonna take him?” asks Hermione. “Is it a big garage?”

“Pretty big, I guess,” says Harry.

“Big for one person,” speaks up FP.

Jerry catches on. “But not for eight, is what you're saying.”

“Oh, no.” says Harry. “No way.”

“You must be out of your mind,” speaks up Mary derisively.  

Jerry lifts his hands in defense. “Hey, many hands -”

“There’s no way,” protests Alice.

Hermione folds her arms. “Do you know how much I paid for this swimsuit?”

“We don’t have enough cars,” adds Melinda, sitting up under the beach umbrella. "It'll be late by the time we bus there." 

FP turns to Hermione. “Go get Hiram. Tell him you have a job for him.”

* * *

“You’re serious?” asks Fred, eyes wide as saucers. His father holds the car keys out to him, the silver keychain glimmering in the still-brilliant sun.

“I expect you to come right home from school tomorrow. No ifs, ands, or buts. And I want it done before you even _think_ about seeing that movie on Tuesday.”

“I promise!” Fred leaps up in delight. “I promise. It’s as good as done.”

“All right,” says his father gruffly, patting Fred awkwardly on the cheek. “Go enjoy it. You’re only young once.”

* * *

They manage to pile their whole group into two cars, racing each other back from the beach and into Fred’s shady suburban neighbourhood. Melinda’s car slows to a crawl outside the Andrews’ front lawn. The garage sits, half-painted, gleaming in the sunlight. Two cans of white paint are open against the side, but the lawn and driveway are deserted.

“Where the hell is he?” Melinda complains.

“He probably went inside to take a leak or something.” FP hops out of the car. “I know where his dad keeps the paintbrushes. Come on. We’ll surprise him when he comes back out.”

* * *

 By four Fred’s combed every inch of the beach in search of his friends, from the volleyball nets to the snack shack.

“Left me,” he mutters, kicking an abandoned beer can across the parking lot. “They’ve all gone off and left me. How do you like that?”

Hermione and Hiram were no surprise - Hiram had probably whisked her off at the first available opportunity. But even FP? When he knew Fred might come by later? What a lousy trick. FP was never this much of a jerk.

Fred flops down onto the sad. He can’t really be mad at FP for not telling him the plans had changed. There was no reason for him to suspect Fred wouldn’t be painting the garage until the sun went down.

“But it stinks,” he says out loud to the beach. “It really stinks.”

A gull screams as it flies by overhead. A group of guys are chatting and laughing on their way to the snack stand, and Fred deflates when he sees no one he recognizes among them.

“Some fucking friends I’ve got. Worst friends in the whole US of A,” mutters Fred, jamming his hat lower over his sunburned ears. “I wouldn’t trade one of them for a wooden nickel.”

* * *

“I’ll admit it, this is kind of fun,” speaks up Alice, splattering white paint over the side of the garage. The seven kids are surrounding the structure on the Andrews’ front lawn, all in various states of undress. Jerry had set his boombox down, and the sun is as bright and honey-gold here as it had been on the beach. It tickles warmly at the back of FP’s bare neck.

“Pass me the big paintbrush,” he interrupts, reaching over Alice to take the dripping utensil from Melinda’s outstretched hand. Most of their thighs are speckled with white paint, but it’s drying quickly in the sun. A dash through a neighbouring sprinkler would take most of it off.

“Depends on your definition of fun,” grumbles Hermione, and Jerry, to her right, laughs.

“Hey, some of us don’t get out much.”

“It’s like a bikini car wash,” Alice offers. “Only garage painting.”

“We should charge him for this.”

“Lets ring the doorbell after. Mrs. A makes good lemonade.”

Jerry’s boombox is blaring at the foot of the ladder, and Melinda nods toward it.

“Is this the new Boyz II Men song?”

“Yeah. How’s that side looking?”

“This one’s done.”

Harry Clayton speaks up from the other side. “Do you guys need the ladder?”

“No, we got the top done.”

“It’s looking good,” says Mary appreciatively. “Where is Fred, anyway?”

“Crazy asshole,” laughs FP, dabbing paint into the corners of the siding. “Isn’t he going to be surprised.”

* * *

“They what?” asks Fred, mouth agape in surprise. His sunburned ears burn worse than ever in the twilit gloom.

“The whole garage,” his mother says, eyes bright. “We looked out the window and they were finishing up. Didn’t even tell us they were there. That’s some group of friends you’ve got, Freddy.”

His father just shakes his head. “Crazy kids. You should see the job they did. Damn near perfect.”

“Who? Who was it?”

“Oh, more than I can count. FP Jones. That Clayton boy. Alice Cooper and Mary Andrews. Hugh Mason’s kid. At least six or seven of ‘em.” Artie shakes his head. “Some friends you’ve got, Fred.”

“Yeah,” says Fred, guiltily, trying and failing to swallow the lump in his throat. “Some friends all right.”


End file.
